For those of you who aren’t regular followers of TLT’s Twitter or Facebook feeds (and if not, why not? 🙂 ), I wanted to share with you some recent, notable food news developments:
New Dietary Guidelines for Americans
Last Thursday, after much food industry lobbying and skirmishing, the Obama administration finally released the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). The DGA expert panel had recommended that the guidelines expressly tell Americans to eat less meat; the omission of this directive in the final version is widely seen as a meat industry victory. However, for the first time the guidelines do advise the public to limit added sugar consumption (to 10% of daily caloric intake), which may lead to the long-awaited “added sugar” disclosure on the Nutrition Facts panel. Excellent DGA analysis here from Politico and Marion Nestle.
By the way, some of you may remember my recent Civil Eats piece on the shocking levels of sugar in many school breakfasts, which cited as one cause the lack of any official dietary guidance on added sugar consumption. If added sugars are eventually disclosed on Nutrition Facts labels, I do think we’ll then see an added sugar cap imposed in federal school food nutritional standards. But I suspect we’re still many years away from that outcome.
Campbell’s to Label GMO Ingredients
Campbell’s announced last week that it will disclose genetically modified ingredients on its food labels, breaking ranks with other leading processed food companies. More here from the New York Times.
Yogurt Wars Head to Court
Yesterday I noticed this full-page ad for Chobani’s 100-calorie yogurt in my New York Times and, as a former advertising lawyer, I was surprised by how aggressive – indeed, reckless – the claims are.
Likely noting the recent success of additive-focused campaigns such as those led by Vani Hari (aka the “Food Babe“), Chobani tells readers that Yoplait’s 100-calorie product contains potassium sorbate, adding “Potassium sorbate? Really? That stuff is used to kill bugs.” It also attacks Dannon’s 100-calorie yogurt for using sucralose, noting “Sucralose? Why? That stuff has chlorine added to it.” Not surprisingly, Dannon threatened legal action, leading Chobani to see a declaratory judgement allowing it to continue making those claims. More here.
Wendy’s Commits to Cage-Free Eggs
Following the lead of many other fast food chains (most notably, McDonald’s), Wendy’s has agreed switch to using only cage-free eggs in the U.S. and Canada by 2020.
Who Needs a Helmet?
Food advocate Casey Hinds takes down new “research” finding that drinking chocolate milk can reduce concussion symptoms. Yes, really.
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bw1 says
So, lots of reversals from Big Brother on what we should eat, and yet you think we should be forced to follow/pay for this. Don’t eat eggs; eat eggs. Because, you know, we were ALWAYS at war with EastAsia.
Interesting article here about the reversals and politicization of the dietary guidlines
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/07/government-revises-dietary-guidelines-for-americans-go-ahead-and-have-some-eggs/
Nice how you bought into the politicization: “the omission of this directive [tp eat less meat] in the final version
is widely seen as a meat industry victory.” It could also be viewed as a defeat for activists of the PETA/rabid environmentalist variety, since the origin of the directive was driven by their ideology rather than nutritional science.
The Campbell’s item is useful in exposing one of your major fallacies. You asserted that I and others opposed to a government GMO labeling mandate are somehow trying to impose our beliefs on others. What we advocate is maintaining the status quo, where vendors are free to use, not use GMO’s and label, or not label with respect to that choice, and consumers are free to purchase, or not purchase products based on GMO labeling or assumptions stemming from its absence, and to communicate their intent to so condition their purchases.
So, under the current status quo, as outlined above, has anyone at Campbell’s been arrested or have any of their facilities been raided by heavily armed federal agents, for defiling our happy GMO agnosticism? Have I or any other labeling mandate opponents called for that to happen or for laws to be passed to make it possible?
It’s also interesting that Wendy’s and McDonald’s are proving my point about the market forces in the hypothetical example I posed about cage free eggs.